


Cliffside Vigils

by Loki_Anansi



Category: Original Work
Genre: Cassius in a big hoodie is giving me Life, Childhood Trauma, Gen, How Do I Tag, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Insomnia, Memory Loss, POV Second Person, Queerplatonic Relationships, Scars, Tombstoning, set in ireland
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:27:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24379435
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loki_Anansi/pseuds/Loki_Anansi
Summary: Vigils: a period of keeping awake during the time usually spent asleep, especially to keep watch or pray.Short Story featuring best friends who are definitely together and Tombstoning, which is apparently the word used to mean Cliff Diving for funsies"It’s easy to controllably tumble down the side of your house, keeping track for any other insomniac busybody in the silent maze that has become your neighborhood tonight. But everything is still and restful, save for the ever-present summer wind and the shifting of houses cemented into the ground, and so you relax and tread the path your feet have been kissing in remembrance for the past 80 days while your mind slips down to your heart; whispering half-truths and half-lies with every step and sway of your sore body."
Relationships: Cassius & Liliana, Original Female Character & Original Male Character
Kudos: 4





	Cliffside Vigils

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rewrite of a short story I wrote back when I was 13? 14?
> 
> I wanted to see if I could control myself and write a short story under 1k.  
> I failed miserably as you can see, but I had fun recreating this story of mine.

You wait until the floorboards settle and the light underneath your sister’s room goes out before you make your nightly escape. Bundled into a heavily worn hoodie that’s from a university that you’ll never be able to attend, with the initials _L.T_ etched into it’s stretched collar and a pair of dark wool shorts, you ease open the latch on your window, slowly heaving it up as a light summer breeze skims over your face.

The sound of your brother wandering through the hallway makes you freeze up, hands clenched white on the window frame as you wait until little footsteps sneakily skip over creaky steps on their way down to what you can only believe is for a midnight snack. 

The first squeak makes you shudder. It is far too close.

The buzzing that only occurs when the kitchen lights are turned on makes you relax and let the blood flow back to your scratched up knuckles.

You jump onto the roof before the hesitation that began to build through your forced stillness gets the better of you, tuts disapprovingly and makes you think about what you’re doing, and forces you to get back into bed and forget ever again doing what you’ve been doing for the past 3 months.

With a sort of practiced ease, you catch yourself on old shutters and dig your sandals into the gaping holes of the roof of the house you’ve called home for the past 15 years.

_You try to misremember the tightness that welds up inside you at the physical representation of how you feel._

It’s easy to controllably tumble down the side of your house, keeping track for any other insomniac busybody in the silent maze that has become your neighborhood tonight. But everything is still and restful, save for the ever-present summer wind and the shifting of houses cemented into the ground, and so you relax and tread the path your feet have been kissing in remembrance for the past 80 days while your mind slips down to your heart; whispering half-truths and half-lies with every step and sway of your sore body.

**Nights are getting shorter, means less time to not dream**

_Lie. You dream all the time, every waking moment that you have to give, every kind of dream until your mind feels weightless with it all_

**Tonight he’ll remember you, he’ll know who you are when the sun comes up**

_Truth. He’ll think about you after you part from him, he’ll continue to think about you as Morpheus guides him back to the god’s realm, and he’ll remember you in the timeless moments when he first opens his eyes to see his room covered in sunlight. But you are not guaranteed any promise a moment after the first._

The roaring of dark waves greet you before the dirt beneath your sandals turns damp with newly wetted grass. From a distance, against the backdrop of the world’s natural cradle, you spot a dark figure curled up at the edge of the cliff. There is no surprise, and if there was, it still would not be enough to make you pause in walking towards the still figure and laying down to greet your equal and the stars.

The silence has been a steady companion for years, and for all that you wish to have the one you want, you let it grow amidst the spaces between you and the boy who lays against the edge of a cliffside in hopes of drifting over the edge right before a dream begins.

“I thought I was only one in this town that couldn’t sleep.”  
“You think too highly of yourself Cassius.”  
  
You and the boy with scars running up and down his cracked body do not speak after you utter his name, after you let it drop from your lips in a moment of weakness.

_Weakness, you realize after nights of holding your mother while she cried to sleep and doing the same to every single one of your siblings, is shown more in words and actions for all that you feel it in your soul._

You busy yourself with mapping the stars in the sky while Cassius sneaks glances at you from the corner of his wide eye, each look burning itself into your body until you can’t help yourself and meet his eyes head-on. You gaze at each other, thoughts held back from being fully voiced, and it isn’t until you glance directly at the narrowed eye underneath a curtain of burnt skin that Cassius stands up and slowly wanders to the edge of the cliffside, bare feet inches away from allowing the rest of Cassius to drop to the roaring sea below the two of you.

_Cassius does not ask how you know his name and he does not ask about yours._

_You tell yourself that its better than repeating your name to a boy that will just ask again and again every single time you decide to join him._

_You tell yourself that the ash in your mouth comes from days of not sleeping instead of the bittersweet situation that you find yourself in._

You take a breath and join Cassius by the ledge, staying close to the only source of warmth for what felt like miles and let yourself lean slightly forward to see waves crash against the jagged edges of the cliff with more force than you have ever felt in your life before.

**Lie. You forget sometimes, that what you have experienced and what you are about to experience are one and the same. The memories slip from your fingers like sand in the wind and you are helpless to stop it.**

**Sometimes you wonder who forgets the most- you or Cassius?**

Cassius doesn’t feel the need to ask you what you’re doing, and in turn, you don’t try to get him off the edge. Instead, you take the time to reach out and gently touch the fingertips you can see over the cuff of his own hoodie; thick material, unlike yours and its long enough that the sleeves almost covers his hands entirely. You wait until Cassius himself sways towards you to bind your fingers together, palms sliding over the other in such a fluid motion that it feels like the two of you have been doing it for years.

You squeeze your eyes hard enough that the hollow space beneath them throbs from the pressure. But it’s worth it because you don’t wanna cry when you realize that you’ve forgotten that _yes, you have been doing this for years, this and so much more it used to feel like you were one person in two different bodies._

A tug to your bound hand makes you open your eyes long enough to see Cassius jumping over the edge, and a single second before you follow is stretched into eternity as you look at the boy that you have spent your entire life with. 

Covered in aching wounds that never seem to heal and scars that feel numb inside, you see a boy in a too-large thick hoodie with half of his face burned off looking like he just discovered the secrets of the universe in the space between the ocean and the stars.

You think, _I want to feel what he feels_

What you mean is, **I don’t mind the aches as long as I’m with him**

What you do, **_jump off the edge of the cliff and watch as the world’s cradle tumbles down with the two of you_ **

You hit the water with your fingers still tied to the boy who filled the empty spaces of his head with stories about the stars and you believe that as long as that remains a fact, you can do what you do best and keep your head above the water.

As you break the surface, the water tries to drag you back, and if you weren’t used to it, the waves would have ensured that you were kept down. You tug Cassius back to you, hold on to him with a hand over his shoulder as your legs find themselves around his waist, and he places his only free hand over your hip; he was strong enough to keep the two of you afloat as the currents took you closer to the shoreline.

Your hoodie sticks to you like a second skin, the thin fabric becoming more transparent and your hair is fanning out over the water as they become curlier and curlier. In contrast to you, Cassius is basically drowning in his big hoodie, becoming more of a hindrance than any help, but he bears the weight of it like it was nothing. The wind doesn’t pick up and for that you are grateful, just as much as you are that the water isn’t interested in being its usual freezing self.

You shift your bound hands to rest between the two of you, and Cassius gives it a squeeze as if trying to remind himself of what is going on. You rest your head on his shoulder and feel the weight of his own dark curls drop to rest on your neck, sending little rivers of water down your collarbone that warms when he lets out a heavy breath.

“Liliana.” It’s a statement more than anything else, an acknowledgment of a fact that he uncovers with no surprise once his mind allowed him to remember. You do nothing more than shift closer and drop your weight just a little bit more on him. Because right now, you’re drifting in the middle of the sea with the boy you used to share the world with, in the middle of the night after jumping off the edge of a cliff. At this moment, you couldn’t be damned to carry anything, and it’s ok because Cassius is ready to carry you and everything else while you’re like this. 

You’re free while he becomes grounded in reality, and when living in a world that is missing as many pieces as it is for him, being tied to something _real_ , something physical is more of a gift than anything else you can offer.

Cassius’ arms tighten in response to you leaning in even more closer and the rest of your time in the water is spent in peaceful silence.

Sooner rather than later, you find yourself back on top of the very cliff you just jumped, sandals becoming soaked with every minute you spent with them on. At your side is a silent Cassius, who looks on over the horizon as the sun steadily begins to climb up. Without speaking, you both decide to head back into town, leaning into each other as the grass turns into dirt that then turns into the familiar paved gravel of the streets of your town.

You walk the same road together, side by side as your steps sync up and your clothes began to lightly dry in the summer wind all around the two of you. Cassius is the first one to split off, and you take a moment to watch his retreating back move closer and closer to the second house down the street to the left of you. You see the moment before he hesitates between the two lots, and you go to tell him which one is his before Cassius shakes his head and slightly turns towards the second house. The relief hits you harder than it has any right to and you turn back to continue your own way back home before you do something stupid like ask to stay over.

Your hands shake as you climb your way back up to your room, but you refuse to acknowledge it until you’re in the safety of your own bed, under your covers with your still wet clothes making a mess of both the bed and your blankets. But you can’t find it in yourself to care as you realize that today Cassius will wake up and forget every single memory of tonight.

_Just like he’s been doing for the past 3 months_

_Just like he’s been doing ever since you began to join him on those nights he started to jump off cliffs to feel something_

**You don’t want to name what you feel when you realized that he always forgets about you, always you**

**It tastes like a mix between bitterness and agony and you promised yourself you would never feel like this again after you burned every single thing that reminded you of your father except for the hoodie wrapped around your scrapped and cold frame.**

You’re 15 in a tired body but you feel like you’re centuries-old with every night that you close your eyes but can’t sleep. The feeling of being seconds from splitting is becoming the norm and you don’t know what you’ll do when the time comes for you to finally **_break_ **

_You think you know what Atlas felt after taking the weight of the world on his shoulders_

_You used to think that no 15 years old could actually feel like this, but it took your father shredding your family’s heart and leaving it on the doorstep on his way out for you to realize that age has nothing to do with suffering_

_You’re proven the same thing over again the day you’re told that Cassius flatlined twice before they were able to stabilize him. When they told you that he doesn’t even remember who you are anymore._

_Seeing no recognition in eyes you knew like they were your own is apparently the breaking point, your breaking point to be precise._

_You learn that picking yourself back up, piecing yourself back together bit by bit, doesn’t take away the ache; it gives it even more of a reason to grow._

You close your eyes and know that any minute now you’ll fall asleep and wake up to Cassius by your window, looking at you with recognition in his dark grey eyes.

**_Truth. You’ll have to wait until he wakes up to see if you completely lied to yourself._ **

**Author's Note:**

> Liliana is 15  
> Cassius is 16
> 
> The story is set in the middle of summer, around 3 months after a car accident that left Cassius with many scars and heavy memory loss.
> 
> Let me know about any typos and the such and if I have to add any more tags for trigger warnings


End file.
